I made a perfect Trapezohedron and duped it a bunch while also building up innocents, so a lot of party members had max guardian, professional, resistances etc. Also dove into the chara world over and over until I was able to randomly learn the Violence evility (50% increase to ALL stats in exchange for halved XP), and taught it to others too. Baal was not too bad. Mostly had to have people strong enough to enter the stage so they could lift up my heaviest hitter so he wouldn't die in one hit. I wish I could've skipped the Trap and moved right to the Invincible Armor but I didn't want to have to go through item world level 100 multiple times just to steal it. Now with Baal dead I have his Ultimate Barrier and it would be easier, but there is no greater challenge left (other than 20 star carnage Baal?) which is a motivation killer. I didn't 100% the game, find one of every item etc., but I did most things. Notably I haven't done a thing with weapons and perfecting them, 3 Traps are enough to do anything. Everyone had essentially store-bought gear at the end.
I might go back to it later and do some more things but now I have moved on to Disgaea 1 Complete. It is just a straight up grind, throwing yourself at the enemies over and over to level up the traditional way. I didn't really expect anything different but it is a lot slower.
I have moved on to Disgaea 1 Complete. It is just a straight up grind, throwing yourself at the enemies over and over to level up the traditional way. I didn't really expect anything different but it is a lot slower.
As is the case with this series, you can cheese it. There is no level restriction on capturing monsters in D1, so you can start a chain of capturing stronger and stronger monsters until you have a team that can take down Baal.
Speedrunner GreenZSaber has a run of 100% trophies done in 8:32:44.
I have moved on to Disgaea 1 Complete. It is just a straight up grind, throwing yourself at the enemies over and over to level up the traditional way. I didn't really expect anything different but it is a lot slower.
As is the case with this series, you can cheese it. There is no level restriction on capturing monsters in D1, so you can start a chain of capturing stronger and stronger monsters until you have a team that can take down Baal.
Speedrunner GreenZSaber has a run of 100% trophies done in 8:32:44.
Yeah I've looked at some 3-4 hour speedruns and they do crazy stuff. Early on seems like following a very specific set of actions, like you have juuuust enough items to sell for juuuust enough money to heal everyone for the next fight. As well as sometimes leveling by killing your own mans (which I'm avoiding due to story ending reasons).
I had a terrible time yesterday.
I'm up to chapter 3 where I need to get an item to level 10 in the item world before it will let me continue. So I was inside an Imperial Seal...had incredible luck on a couple maps and full cleared the geo panels and enemies, earned a bunch of cool stuff. Then came across a map with invincibility and warp/clone on another color. This is way early in the game, most of my characters are under level 10. I abuse this for like 2 hours, clone some of my own dudes when necessary, have people stationed around the map in different spots just counter-killing. It's not fast leveling but it is getting me a lot of weapon mastery. Got several people from like level 8 to 15. Finally finished the map and earned 45,000 gold from the kill bonus, which is massive at this level!
...Then I realized. You can't access the warehouse from the item world. My only Mr. Gency is in the warehouse. >_<
In spite of the gained levels I get mobbed by a bunch of enemies and we just can't keep up. Impossible to just toss my way to the exit because it's got a guard. And I was getting so weak, and had like 3 floors left to get to 10, there was no way. They slaughtered me and I lost everything.
Remember that item world guardians can be pushed off their spot with skills that move them, like a bunch of fist skills. That's a large part of why the Power Ranger expies were such great item worlders in 4. Flying, huge movement, access to fist moves. A couple of them with triple shoes, and you can dive basically anything looking for freebie stuff in secret rooms, or just quickly powering up items above your level.
Yeah I know to have fist skill people for item world, saving myself just wasn't possible for me with the remaining resources I had. Or the other thing I saw recommended for item world was Striders with their potentially very long range Dark Cannon (for far-off unclearable islands) and Geo Change.
I beat the game with the best ending and got most of the way through it a second time. Unlocked Plenair, the three Prism Rangers, and Asagi. I have 900 statisticians and recently finished getting 1900 armsmasters, which I feel is the magic formula to fast leveling. I was wondering how the heck to get individual characters powerful enough to kill the 3x3 demons in Cave of Ordeal 3, turns out it's fast-tracking them 5% more damage per weapon level. Also seems effective to have a character who can mostly kill the demons, then finish them off with a weakling (boosted by mages with Braveheart). I don't have an uber-weapon yet but I took the highest power sword I have available to me and got it to level 30 which helped a lot.
I kind of want to do everything in this game if I can, because it feels a lot more attainable than other Disgaeas. There's less to do.
I wanted to get three rank 0 Horse Wieners and level them up all the way as perfect pieces of armor.
I will say I don't know how people grind out 19998 of any specialist, let alone multiple times. Unless later pieces of gear suddenly start coming with 1000 gladiators on them to lessen the time it takes.
In Disgaea 5, I have about 150 hours and it's one of few games on the PS4 I have platinumed. I am really excited for the announced Disgaea 4 on Xbox, because that's where I do most of my gaming.
I have done nearly everything you can do in Disgaea 1.
Saw every ending (the "pass 100 bills by force" was a slog) and as a result was able to buy every music track
Accumulated the max effective stored levels of 186,000 on a character and taught him every spell
Stole all the most unique items from postgame bosses like the Prinny Costume and Astro Suit
Went through 100 item world floors in a rank 40 item without ever leaving in order to get the Hyperdrive
Made a perfect rarity 0 Yoshitsuna (best sword in the game) and three perfect rarity 0 Super Robo Suits (best armor in the game)
Made a few other perfect rarity 0 versions of the best weapons in their class including the best gun and staff
Unlocked every unique character and have one of every human class at its max rank
Stole and leveled three perfect rarity 0 Horse Wieners to wear proudly
Things I did not do:
Did not make any monsters at all because they're pointless and poorly-designed in Disgaea 1
Did not bother to get all the best weapons like the best spear or bow
Did not make any maximum level stacks of specialists (innocents) other than Statistician and Armsmaster; the stat ones you can only get 150-200 at a time at most, yet they cap at 19998 and the best gear has 16 slots to fill, there was just no way and no point
Did not get every character to 9999, really I only needed my main divine majin and a thief
Did not collect every item in the game, after over 120 hours I only have 65.46% and I had been pretty thorough about buying and stealing everything I ever saw. This would be a massive, massive time investment to try to find everything.
I am ok with not doing these things and I already did way more than I should have. :P
I have done nearly everything you can do in Disgaea 1.
Saw every ending (the "pass 100 bills by force" was a slog) and as a result was able to buy every music track
Accumulated the max effective stored levels of 186,000 on a character and taught him every spell
Stole all the most unique items from postgame bosses like the Prinny Costume and Astro Suit
Went through 100 item world floors in a rank 40 item without ever leaving in order to get the Hyperdrive
Made a perfect rarity 0 Yoshitsuna (best sword in the game) and three perfect rarity 0 Super Robo Suits (best armor in the game)
Made a few other perfect rarity 0 versions of the best weapons in their class including the best gun and staff
Unlocked every unique character and have one of every human class at its max rank
Stole and leveled three perfect rarity 0 Horse Wieners to wear proudly
Things I did not do:
Did not make any monsters at all because they're pointless and poorly-designed in Disgaea 1
Did not bother to get all the best weapons like the best spear or bow
Did not make any maximum level stacks of specialists (innocents) other than Statistician and Armsmaster; the stat ones you can only get 150-200 at a time at most, yet they cap at 19998 and the best gear has 16 slots to fill, there was just no way and no point
Did not get every character to 9999, really I only needed my main divine majin and a thief
Did not collect every item in the game, after over 120 hours I only have 65.46% and I had been pretty thorough about buying and stealing everything I ever saw. This would be a massive, massive time investment to try to find everything.
I am ok with not doing these things and I already did way more than I should have. :P
Now see if you can beat Prinny. :P
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited September 2020
Finally past where I lost my data at in D4.
For all the little unnecessarily convoluted things that Disgaea has added over the years: evilities, buying skills with mana, formations/classroom groups/buildings/etc, it still feels like the gameplay and story missions haven't changed at all. Why not have more evolving AI instead of 'we just attack you'? Have them start using geocubes and such against the party? Make them scary.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
I thought statistician effects were capped at 300 in the first game?
All that stuff is better than I've done in any Disgaea. I usually get to the point where I can eke out a win against the first Baal, and then it becomes an existential "Fuck, what the shit am I doing?" and I end up rage quitting, disgusted at myself. Then I may or may not come back to it a couple years later, saying to myself "I'll muscle through the whole thing and do everything this time" and end up quitting halfway through the postgame. 4R was the only one I actually got further the second time through, but I failed on that when I forgot what I was doing while farming Item Gods to make a super Trap or something before duping it. When I remembered, I was like "Ugh, I don't want to do all this over again just to get back to this" and... that was the end of that.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Looks like D4 is coming to PC and Game Pass this month. I had no idea that was happening, now I can skip most of the waiting. Always nice.
Disgaea 4 Complete+ (PC) – September 10
The ultimate Disgaea has arrived on Xbox Game Pass for PC! HL-raising action and a horde of special features await you in this tale of fiery revolution. With over 30 unlockable characters, extra story campaigns, and modern flourishes to the Disgaea formula, Disgaea 4 Complete+ offers as deep and smooth of an SRPG experience as there has ever been.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Is D4 really considered the best over 5? Apart from the shiny sprites, I don't think it does anything 3 didn't...
Is D4 really considered the best over 5? Apart from the shiny sprites, I don't think it does anything 3 didn't...
It has tons of gameplay improvements and tweaks over 3, especially the re-release which adds the cheat shop, among other things. Much meatier postgame, pirating, reverse pirating, all the cam-pain stuff, better chara world, etc etc.
We were talking about the merits of Disgaea 4 vs. 5 in the storytelling department over in the Switch thread and I thought I'd expand on my thoughts here. I have the seemingly unpopular opinion that 4 and 5 are closer in quality than most people say...I would argue that 4 has better characters, but 5 has a better story. But for some, having better characters is more important than the story.
This is spoilery for 4.
I don't dislike either game, nor really hate any part of either game.
Both can be disrespectful of the player's time with really long dialogue repeatedly going over things you already know. I think both fall into the common trope of "each member of the main party must say something at least once during every scene, no matter how banal." But both also have plenty of high points as well.
I think what 4 got right which sticks with most people is the character of Valvatorez, aided by Troy Baker's excellent delivery. And to a lesser extent, the fun concept of Desco.
In my opinion the primary thing to achieve good storytelling is that you either want to see the characters evolve and grow over the course of the plot, or have some really interesting twists and turns along the way, and 4 does neither. Character growth largely doesn't happen in 4 except for Emizel, whereas everyone in 5 has their moments.
Valvatorez's whole thing is the importance of keeping one's promises. I expected his past self to be a habitual oath-breaker until one specific moment that wounded him and changed his outlook, which led to his commitment to promises...nope. He was just always like this, and still is at the end. By contrast, Killia does follow the character growth laid out here. I recognize peoples' complaints about how boring he is and agree with a lot of it, but I appreciate his story.
I was kind of dumbfounded in 4 when "Vulcanus" shows up and everyone starts speculating about her being Artina, and the big reveal at the end is...yes, all the speculations were correct. The ending was spoiled practically from the beginning, and then they don't do anything with it either. I was all geared up for some sort of twist to shake things up, but no. I mean, just one example of a tweak: suppose Artina had ALWAYS been an angel, even when she "died" on earth, and her death was part of a money-making scam to lampshade how good we thought she was. Just anything other than finding out everything is exactly what we thought it would be and therefore there's nothing at all to talk about when it's revealed.
Characters like Desco and Fuka live or die by how endearing you find their gimmick to be. I was done putting up with Fuka the moment I met her, but Desco was awesome. However, neither really changed much...Fuka could've become less insufferable in the same ways Seraphina did, but they didn't really do anything with her. Fuka kept talking about how everything was just a dream. Desco kept talking about being a final boss. Valvatorez kept talking about keeping your promises. Fenrich kept saying "all is for my lord." Artina was generically good and didn't have much to say.
In 5, even the annoying characters end up on a path to growth or have some sort of realization, and I liked everyone to some extent by the end. I would've never expected them to pull off what they did with a joke character like Red Magnus, and I liked all of Christo's story and personal conflict. Most people seem to agree that everything to do with Usalia was a high point.
And besides that I just like the planet-hopping storyline of 5, where it feels like a lot more happened compared to 4. I sort of struggle to remember the plot of 4...basically you systematically conquer the netherworld, deal with a character transforming pandemic, and then put an angry ghost to rest. None of it was really interesting to me.
Neither game is perfect, both 4 and 5 have a rigid structure where it's like, early chapter introduces character, later chapter resolves their arc. I feel like 5's story was just more interesting overall, with surprises along the way.
Now, if you wanted to talk about how a traditional story with character growth doesn't fit the light-hearted comedy tone of Disgaea, that's another conversation. It's true that typically in comedy shows, a lack of character growth is part of the comedy. But in spite of that, most people seem to agree that Disgaea 1 was able to pull off both characters and story effectively.
Also the worst story of both games for me was the Time Leap DLC story from 4, which tells the exact same story we already heard in 4 about Valvatorez's past but stretches it out to 5-6 excruciating hours. I thought we were getting some kind of Back to the Future thing where the past changed and we have to fix things...no, nothing like that. It's the exact same story with more dialogue. It took them forever to even realize they had time traveled at all. Nemo didn't even show up. However in spite of everything else I did like Nagi a lot.
We were talking about the merits of Disgaea 4 vs. 5 in the storytelling department over in the Switch thread and I thought I'd expand on my thoughts here. I have the seemingly unpopular opinion that 4 and 5 are closer in quality than most people say...I would argue that 4 has better characters, but 5 has a better story. But for some, having better characters is more important than the story.
This is spoilery for 4.
I don't dislike either game, nor really hate any part of either game.
Both can be disrespectful of the player's time with really long dialogue repeatedly going over things you already know. I think both fall into the common trope of "each member of the main party must say something at least once during every scene, no matter how banal." But both also have plenty of high points as well.
I think what 4 got right which sticks with most people is the character of Valvatorez, aided by Troy Baker's excellent delivery. And to a lesser extent, the fun concept of Desco.
In my opinion the primary thing to achieve good storytelling is that you either want to see the characters evolve and grow over the course of the plot, or have some really interesting twists and turns along the way, and 4 does neither. Character growth largely doesn't happen in 4 except for Emizel, whereas everyone in 5 has their moments.
Valvatorez's whole thing is the importance of keeping one's promises. I expected his past self to be a habitual oath-breaker until one specific moment that wounded him and changed his outlook, which led to his commitment to promises...nope. He was just always like this, and still is at the end. By contrast, Killia does follow the character growth laid out here. I recognize peoples' complaints about how boring he is and agree with a lot of it, but I appreciate his story.
I was kind of dumbfounded in 4 when "Vulcanus" shows up and everyone starts speculating about her being Artina, and the big reveal at the end is...yes, all the speculations were correct. The ending was spoiled practically from the beginning, and then they don't do anything with it either. I was all geared up for some sort of twist to shake things up, but no. I mean, just one example of a tweak: suppose Artina had ALWAYS been an angel, even when she "died" on earth, and her death was part of a money-making scam to lampshade how good we thought she was. Just anything other than finding out everything is exactly what we thought it would be and therefore there's nothing at all to talk about when it's revealed.
Characters like Desco and Fuka live or die by how endearing you find their gimmick to be. I was done putting up with Fuka the moment I met her, but Desco was awesome. However, neither really changed much...Fuka could've become less insufferable in the same ways Seraphina did, but they didn't really do anything with her. Fuka kept talking about how everything was just a dream. Desco kept talking about being a final boss. Valvatorez kept talking about keeping your promises. Fenrich kept saying "all is for my lord." Artina was generically good and didn't have much to say.
In 5, even the annoying characters end up on a path to growth or have some sort of realization, and I liked everyone to some extent by the end. I would've never expected them to pull off what they did with a joke character like Red Magnus, and I liked all of Christo's story and personal conflict. Most people seem to agree that everything to do with Usalia was a high point.
And besides that I just like the planet-hopping storyline of 5, where it feels like a lot more happened compared to 4. I sort of struggle to remember the plot of 4...basically you systematically conquer the netherworld, deal with a character transforming pandemic, and then put an angry ghost to rest. None of it was really interesting to me.
Neither game is perfect, both 4 and 5 have a rigid structure where it's like, early chapter introduces character, later chapter resolves their arc. I feel like 5's story was just more interesting overall, with surprises along the way.
Now, if you wanted to talk about how a traditional story with character growth doesn't fit the light-hearted comedy tone of Disgaea, that's another conversation. It's true that typically in comedy shows, a lack of character growth is part of the comedy. But in spite of that, most people seem to agree that Disgaea 1 was able to pull off both characters and story effectively.
Also the worst story of both games for me was the Time Leap DLC story from 4, which tells the exact same story we already heard in 4 about Valvatorez's past but stretches it out to 5-6 excruciating hours. I thought we were getting some kind of Back to the Future thing where the past changed and we have to fix things...no, nothing like that. It's the exact same story with more dialogue. It took them forever to even realize they had time traveled at all. Nemo didn't even show up. However in spite of everything else I did like Nagi a lot.
First off, the Time Leap stuff was atrocious. My memories of it are pretty fuzzy at this point, except that I despised every aspect of it, but it kept just. fucking. going. on. and. fucking. on. It wasn't DLC though. It was added long after the fact in the Vita version. That is was essentially free, packaged with all the other DLC they actually put time and effort into, is the only defense for it. It should not have existed at all and was terrible on every level.
I had pretty much the opposite reaction/feelings to you about Fuka/Vulcanus/Magnus/Christo/Seraphina/etc. I could tolerate Fuka/Vulcanus, but I found the Saturday morning cartoon stuff of 5's cast insufferable. It was like 6 straight chapters of "I claimed I was X, but I'm not." "That's okay. You're you." "You're right! I should believe in myself and my friends more. That has awoken my True Potential!" Then they go right back to exactly how they were before, but with an extra evility and one changed combat voice line. And every. single. character. had to do that, each in sequence like they were going straight down a checklist. Which isn't to defend 4's latter half, as it was insufferable in a different way, but I can definitely remember its story points, except its because they grated on me. It did one chapter where every stage's joke was "Yay, we beat the last boss. But *gasp* look behind them! It's the LASTER boss!" and was apparently so enamored of that gag that it decided to do it for every single chapter after that, through netherworld president, human president, mad scientist, aliens, god.
I don't remember much of either 3 or 4, but I remember more beats from 4, so... I guess that means it's better, or at least it just stuck more with me. Fuka and Desco's interactions. The whole gag with Asagi being stuck with her old low-res model. Even just the first fight with Fuka.
Having played previous Disgaea's, the notion of her theme just being her humming the Prinny "theme song" tickled me pink.
And as much as the "I'm not a duck" joke started to grate, it did lead to the one big joke I still remember from the game that I thought was hilarious.
When you meet Fuka's dad, who's a scientist, and even he says "No Fuka honey, you're dead." Without missing a beat Val jumps in with "Ah-HA! Now we have a scientist backing us up! You are dead! PRINNY RULE NUMBER 1:...
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
While D2 remains my favorite, I liked D3's cast a lot, even if not the story.
I'm only at Chapter 3 in D4, so the jury(or demon tribunal) is still out on the verdict.
All the talk of Disgaea 5 made me go back to it, last I played was Switch launch(?).
I had 125 hours into it and had a reasonably high leveled carnage trap I was starting to dupe. I had almost everything unlocked (obviously not the item collection) but I hadn't beaten Baal.
I started over completely because I felt like I lost ownership over it, sort of. I don't know exactly what that guy was doing or where he was, outside of gearing up for Baal. I just started a new save.
It's immediately more engaging to me that Disgaea 4 was. The pacing is much better, and now with the recent context of 1 and 4, I'm really appreciating all the changes and additions. The sheer amount of info on status screens that used to be more tucked away, not having a separate item bag, the way skills are unlocked and upgraded, the evility system, changes to throws and towers, everything. It makes me pretty excited for a Disgaea 6.
Also I now have very strong memories of watching through a whole bunch of King of the Hill episodes while endlessly diving into the Chara World board game.
I'd like to try 5 again, but I I feel like I'd need a hand-holding primer that's a lot more in depth than the game's tutorial. The systems got overwhelming real fast, basically the polar opposite of so many systems heavy JRPGs.
PSN: Kurahoshi1
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
2 is the only game I went whole hog in, in that I went after damn near every optional boss, which is a lot easier thanks to Adell's crazy "does more damage the higher powered the boss is" ability. I still never did stupid stuff like making broken characters or even finishing an item world, though. Just too exhausting.
One minor story issue Disgaea 5 has that bugs me, which I remember noticing on my last playthrough and I'm re-experiencing, is how it tries to identify various characters as being members of the Lost but with no visual indication that they're any different from anyone else.
It even comes up in dialogue. "Oh no, it's the Lost! Wait no...these are people from this netherworld!" Alright, what actually indicated that?
Doesn't seem like it would've been too hard to either tint the sprites with uniform colors (AFAIK the first game to offer freeform color editing), or stick a little red button on their sprite to indicate Lost membership.
I'm always weirded out in the story when a bunch of miscellaneous units show up and the party is like "oh look! It's the Lost!!" and I'm like, really, how can you tell? They look like a bunch of randoms to me...could've at least given them all a little starfleet emblem lapel pin or something...
The party also gets mistaken for the Lost, so I'm pretty sure there's not supposed to be a visual cue for it. It's just "Hostile armed force? Must be the Lost. Red Magnus recognises them? Must not be the Lost after all".
The party also gets mistaken for the Lost, so I'm pretty sure there's not supposed to be a visual cue for it. It's just "Hostile armed force? Must be the Lost. Red Magnus recognises them? Must not be the Lost after all".
True. Mostly I just wish that I could recognize them. At least all of Majorita's zombies get zombie-colored.
I remember when I first played Disgaea 5 the only experience I'd had was Disgaea 1, so when I got to the item world and it had:
- a flying delivery person who drops complications into maps
- little walking bottles with evility scrolls
- little weird guys holding up signs who give you bonus stats
- Proto Darkdeath who shows up to wreck your day
- level spheres to destroy to level up the item further
- strange fish you can lift up to gain extra benefits
- invasions of the Lost and other netherworlds which add global effects to the fight and you can fight off with your own netherworld
- a bunch of unique special rooms with weird situations and various benefits like free pies and item duping
I thought "wow, there's so much stuff here, they must've been adding these a little at a time with each new game."
Only to find out that most of it (over half) was just added in 5. Along with Chara World as a board game instead of just an alternate item world, the Innocent Farm, curries...
Playing 4 really made me appreciate how revolutionary 5 was, and I'm loving the story on the second time around too. Noticing that Red Magnus has flashes of improvement and teamwork long before his big character moment.
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Yeah, the only stuff I recognize is the special rooms and level spheres. It was 2 that kicked off the pirates and special rooms, and the spheres were added in 4.
I remember when I first played Disgaea 5 the only experience I'd had was Disgaea 1, so when I got to the item world and it had:
- a flying delivery person who drops complications into maps
- little walking bottles with evility scrolls
- little weird guys holding up signs who give you bonus stats
- Proto Darkdeath who shows up to wreck your day
- level spheres to destroy to level up the item further
- strange fish you can lift up to gain extra benefits
- invasions of the Lost and other netherworlds which add global effects to the fight and you can fight off with your own netherworld
- a bunch of unique special rooms with weird situations and various benefits like free pies and item duping
I thought "wow, there's so much stuff here, they must've been adding these a little at a time with each new game."
Only to find out that most of it (over half) was just added in 5. Along with Chara World as a board game instead of just an alternate item world, the Innocent Farm, curries...
Playing 4 really made me appreciate how revolutionary 5 was, and I'm loving the story on the second time around too. Noticing that Red Magnus has flashes of improvement and teamwork long before his big character moment.
I didn't like all that little stuff all that much. It mostly provided microscopic benefits that I quickly deemed "meh, whatever" and mostly ignored. At the same time, they massively reduced the number and variety of special rooms, and a lot of the replacements were obnoxious. I also lamented losing all the wacky themed pirate invasions, especially the user pirate stuff. When 5 interrupted
I also hated the board game. It took forever, and I neither wanted or needed a second inventory to have to manage and deal with.
I also hated the board game. It took forever, and I neither wanted or needed a second inventory to have to manage and deal with.
I'm not sure what you mean about a second inventory. Board game-related items (dice) are just part of your normal inventory alongside everything else, though while in Chara World it only shows items relevant there.
Disgaeas prior to 5 had a secondary small inventory bag to limit how many items you had access to outside the base. In 5 you can just access up to 2000 items everywhere.
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I might go back to it later and do some more things but now I have moved on to Disgaea 1 Complete. It is just a straight up grind, throwing yourself at the enemies over and over to level up the traditional way. I didn't really expect anything different but it is a lot slower.
Speedrunner GreenZSaber has a run of 100% trophies done in 8:32:44.
http://www.twitch.tv/greenzsaber/v/545562586
Yeah I've looked at some 3-4 hour speedruns and they do crazy stuff. Early on seems like following a very specific set of actions, like you have juuuust enough items to sell for juuuust enough money to heal everyone for the next fight. As well as sometimes leveling by killing your own mans (which I'm avoiding due to story ending reasons).
I had a terrible time yesterday.
I'm up to chapter 3 where I need to get an item to level 10 in the item world before it will let me continue. So I was inside an Imperial Seal...had incredible luck on a couple maps and full cleared the geo panels and enemies, earned a bunch of cool stuff. Then came across a map with invincibility and warp/clone on another color. This is way early in the game, most of my characters are under level 10. I abuse this for like 2 hours, clone some of my own dudes when necessary, have people stationed around the map in different spots just counter-killing. It's not fast leveling but it is getting me a lot of weapon mastery. Got several people from like level 8 to 15. Finally finished the map and earned 45,000 gold from the kill bonus, which is massive at this level!
...Then I realized. You can't access the warehouse from the item world. My only Mr. Gency is in the warehouse. >_<
In spite of the gained levels I get mobbed by a bunch of enemies and we just can't keep up. Impossible to just toss my way to the exit because it's got a guard. And I was getting so weak, and had like 3 floors left to get to 10, there was no way. They slaughtered me and I lost everything.
The sprites are still gorgeous. I guess when I play the Vita version, I'll zip through the story mode for the extra stuff.
I beat the game with the best ending and got most of the way through it a second time. Unlocked Plenair, the three Prism Rangers, and Asagi. I have 900 statisticians and recently finished getting 1900 armsmasters, which I feel is the magic formula to fast leveling. I was wondering how the heck to get individual characters powerful enough to kill the 3x3 demons in Cave of Ordeal 3, turns out it's fast-tracking them 5% more damage per weapon level. Also seems effective to have a character who can mostly kill the demons, then finish them off with a weakling (boosted by mages with Braveheart). I don't have an uber-weapon yet but I took the highest power sword I have available to me and got it to level 30 which helped a lot.
I kind of want to do everything in this game if I can, because it feels a lot more attainable than other Disgaeas. There's less to do.
I wanted to get three rank 0 Horse Wieners and level them up all the way as perfect pieces of armor.
I will say I don't know how people grind out 19998 of any specialist, let alone multiple times. Unless later pieces of gear suddenly start coming with 1000 gladiators on them to lessen the time it takes.
Things I did not do:
I am ok with not doing these things and I already did way more than I should have. :P
Now see if you can beat Prinny. :P
For all the little unnecessarily convoluted things that Disgaea has added over the years: evilities, buying skills with mana, formations/classroom groups/buildings/etc, it still feels like the gameplay and story missions haven't changed at all. Why not have more evolving AI instead of 'we just attack you'? Have them start using geocubes and such against the party? Make them scary.
They were, but in the rereleases it's 900.
Starting from when? DS version? Steam version? I wish I knew that!
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Specifically the HD rereleases. So Switch/PS4/Android/iOS.
It has tons of gameplay improvements and tweaks over 3, especially the re-release which adds the cheat shop, among other things. Much meatier postgame, pirating, reverse pirating, all the cam-pain stuff, better chara world, etc etc.
This is spoilery for 4.
Both can be disrespectful of the player's time with really long dialogue repeatedly going over things you already know. I think both fall into the common trope of "each member of the main party must say something at least once during every scene, no matter how banal." But both also have plenty of high points as well.
I think what 4 got right which sticks with most people is the character of Valvatorez, aided by Troy Baker's excellent delivery. And to a lesser extent, the fun concept of Desco.
In my opinion the primary thing to achieve good storytelling is that you either want to see the characters evolve and grow over the course of the plot, or have some really interesting twists and turns along the way, and 4 does neither. Character growth largely doesn't happen in 4 except for Emizel, whereas everyone in 5 has their moments.
Valvatorez's whole thing is the importance of keeping one's promises. I expected his past self to be a habitual oath-breaker until one specific moment that wounded him and changed his outlook, which led to his commitment to promises...nope. He was just always like this, and still is at the end. By contrast, Killia does follow the character growth laid out here. I recognize peoples' complaints about how boring he is and agree with a lot of it, but I appreciate his story.
I was kind of dumbfounded in 4 when "Vulcanus" shows up and everyone starts speculating about her being Artina, and the big reveal at the end is...yes, all the speculations were correct. The ending was spoiled practically from the beginning, and then they don't do anything with it either. I was all geared up for some sort of twist to shake things up, but no. I mean, just one example of a tweak: suppose Artina had ALWAYS been an angel, even when she "died" on earth, and her death was part of a money-making scam to lampshade how good we thought she was. Just anything other than finding out everything is exactly what we thought it would be and therefore there's nothing at all to talk about when it's revealed.
Characters like Desco and Fuka live or die by how endearing you find their gimmick to be. I was done putting up with Fuka the moment I met her, but Desco was awesome. However, neither really changed much...Fuka could've become less insufferable in the same ways Seraphina did, but they didn't really do anything with her. Fuka kept talking about how everything was just a dream. Desco kept talking about being a final boss. Valvatorez kept talking about keeping your promises. Fenrich kept saying "all is for my lord." Artina was generically good and didn't have much to say.
In 5, even the annoying characters end up on a path to growth or have some sort of realization, and I liked everyone to some extent by the end. I would've never expected them to pull off what they did with a joke character like Red Magnus, and I liked all of Christo's story and personal conflict. Most people seem to agree that everything to do with Usalia was a high point.
And besides that I just like the planet-hopping storyline of 5, where it feels like a lot more happened compared to 4. I sort of struggle to remember the plot of 4...basically you systematically conquer the netherworld, deal with a character transforming pandemic, and then put an angry ghost to rest. None of it was really interesting to me.
Neither game is perfect, both 4 and 5 have a rigid structure where it's like, early chapter introduces character, later chapter resolves their arc. I feel like 5's story was just more interesting overall, with surprises along the way.
Now, if you wanted to talk about how a traditional story with character growth doesn't fit the light-hearted comedy tone of Disgaea, that's another conversation. It's true that typically in comedy shows, a lack of character growth is part of the comedy. But in spite of that, most people seem to agree that Disgaea 1 was able to pull off both characters and story effectively.
Also the worst story of both games for me was the Time Leap DLC story from 4, which tells the exact same story we already heard in 4 about Valvatorez's past but stretches it out to 5-6 excruciating hours. I thought we were getting some kind of Back to the Future thing where the past changed and we have to fix things...no, nothing like that. It's the exact same story with more dialogue. It took them forever to even realize they had time traveled at all. Nemo didn't even show up. However in spite of everything else I did like Nagi a lot.
So not the steam one then?
First off, the Time Leap stuff was atrocious. My memories of it are pretty fuzzy at this point, except that I despised every aspect of it, but it kept just. fucking. going. on. and. fucking. on. It wasn't DLC though. It was added long after the fact in the Vita version. That is was essentially free, packaged with all the other DLC they actually put time and effort into, is the only defense for it. It should not have existed at all and was terrible on every level.
I had pretty much the opposite reaction/feelings to you about Fuka/Vulcanus/Magnus/Christo/Seraphina/etc. I could tolerate Fuka/Vulcanus, but I found the Saturday morning cartoon stuff of 5's cast insufferable. It was like 6 straight chapters of "I claimed I was X, but I'm not." "That's okay. You're you." "You're right! I should believe in myself and my friends more. That has awoken my True Potential!" Then they go right back to exactly how they were before, but with an extra evility and one changed combat voice line. And every. single. character. had to do that, each in sequence like they were going straight down a checklist. Which isn't to defend 4's latter half, as it was insufferable in a different way, but I can definitely remember its story points, except its because they grated on me. It did one chapter where every stage's joke was "Yay, we beat the last boss. But *gasp* look behind them! It's the LASTER boss!" and was apparently so enamored of that gag that it decided to do it for every single chapter after that, through netherworld president, human president, mad scientist, aliens, god.
Having played previous Disgaea's, the notion of her theme just being her humming the Prinny "theme song" tickled me pink.
And as much as the "I'm not a duck" joke started to grate, it did lead to the one big joke I still remember from the game that I thought was hilarious.
I'm only at Chapter 3 in D4, so the jury(or demon tribunal) is still out on the verdict.
I still say we need a better way to abbreviate these given that there's an actual D2.
I'd refer to that as DD2, though I never had an interest in it.
I had 125 hours into it and had a reasonably high leveled carnage trap I was starting to dupe. I had almost everything unlocked (obviously not the item collection) but I hadn't beaten Baal.
I started over completely because I felt like I lost ownership over it, sort of. I don't know exactly what that guy was doing or where he was, outside of gearing up for Baal. I just started a new save.
It's immediately more engaging to me that Disgaea 4 was. The pacing is much better, and now with the recent context of 1 and 4, I'm really appreciating all the changes and additions. The sheer amount of info on status screens that used to be more tucked away, not having a separate item bag, the way skills are unlocked and upgraded, the evility system, changes to throws and towers, everything. It makes me pretty excited for a Disgaea 6.
The only one I don’t much like is 2.
It even comes up in dialogue. "Oh no, it's the Lost! Wait no...these are people from this netherworld!" Alright, what actually indicated that?
Doesn't seem like it would've been too hard to either tint the sprites with uniform colors (AFAIK the first game to offer freeform color editing), or stick a little red button on their sprite to indicate Lost membership.
EDIT: Me from 2017 in this thread lol:
True. Mostly I just wish that I could recognize them. At least all of Majorita's zombies get zombie-colored.
- a flying delivery person who drops complications into maps
- little walking bottles with evility scrolls
- little weird guys holding up signs who give you bonus stats
- Proto Darkdeath who shows up to wreck your day
- level spheres to destroy to level up the item further
- strange fish you can lift up to gain extra benefits
- invasions of the Lost and other netherworlds which add global effects to the fight and you can fight off with your own netherworld
- a bunch of unique special rooms with weird situations and various benefits like free pies and item duping
I thought "wow, there's so much stuff here, they must've been adding these a little at a time with each new game."
Only to find out that most of it (over half) was just added in 5. Along with Chara World as a board game instead of just an alternate item world, the Innocent Farm, curries...
Playing 4 really made me appreciate how revolutionary 5 was, and I'm loving the story on the second time around too. Noticing that Red Magnus has flashes of improvement and teamwork long before his big character moment.
I didn't like all that little stuff all that much. It mostly provided microscopic benefits that I quickly deemed "meh, whatever" and mostly ignored. At the same time, they massively reduced the number and variety of special rooms, and a lot of the replacements were obnoxious. I also lamented losing all the wacky themed pirate invasions, especially the user pirate stuff. When 5 interrupted
I also hated the board game. It took forever, and I neither wanted or needed a second inventory to have to manage and deal with.
I'm not sure what you mean about a second inventory. Board game-related items (dice) are just part of your normal inventory alongside everything else, though while in Chara World it only shows items relevant there.
Disgaeas prior to 5 had a secondary small inventory bag to limit how many items you had access to outside the base. In 5 you can just access up to 2000 items everywhere.